Let's Start at the Beginning
Starting from when we are very young, why do we play games (including sports)? Short answer - "Sports are 'pretend life.'" Youngsters can learn life's lessons from day to day involvement in games of various types without losing their jobs or risking their lives or futures. (For example, be a poor teammate and see how long it takes for you to be picked in choose-ups).
Leave it to Adults to Screw Things Up
Don't get me wrong - there are terrific people involved in coaching who have helped kids. But too many parents (often wanting to reverse mistakes they made in their earlier lives) live vicariously through the athletic exploits of their children. So they send their Little Precious to Gymnastics or Ballet Class in the hope she'll turn out to be the next Margot Fonteyne or Nadia Kholmenici (sp?). Or they'll encourage their 10-year old strikeout artist to throw a splitter (regardless of the risk to his young arm).
When I was a kid, our youth sports leagues were tied to our nearby elementary school. Every baseball player got a T-shirt and cap. That was it. Now we have "tag days." Every time a parent is forced to invest time and effort to hang around shopping mall entrances with canister in hand, it somehow gives them a sense of "ownership" in the team and entitles them to demand that the coach play his son or daughter or act like Vince Lombardi.
Add to this, the incentive - especially in low income homes - to turn an athletic kid into a future "cash cow" and you've got a million individual disasters waiting to happen.
Bad Habits Move Upward
Values in the home when kids are young move right up the food chain into Junior High and High School. I live in an affluent high-tech community where you'd think athletics would be kept in proper perspective. Instead, we recently had a top-to-bottom change in school administration - from Superintendent of Schools on-down - directly due to a coach-to-player incident. How could that happen?
Well...a coach felt a student-player wasn't adhering to team policy and he suspended him from the football team. The parents bitched to the school administration. The player was reinstated. The coach and his entire staff resigned in protest. The teacher-coach and other school staffers who supported the coach were demoted or reassigned to marginal educational positions. Political infighting among school administration and staff became the norm. Things got so fouled up that eventually the school board stepped in, reinstated the demoted staffers and cleaned house from the top down.
So, at the HS level, you wind up with meddling parents, coddled athletes, the student-athlete as future meal ticket and the over-deification of star players - not an easy challenge for the "good guys" who merely view athletics as one of many mechanisms for teaching life's lessons and building character.
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